The frames that don't fit a category. Personal work, experiments, images made for no reason other than that I had to make them. This is where the eye wanders off the brief.
The frames that do not fit a category. No brief, no client, no reason beyond the fact that something looked worth keeping — and those are usually the images that teach me whatever I take into paid work six months later.This is where I experiment with the things a job would not sit still for.
This is the other half.
That is the point of having somewhere for it to fail. I keep this page because a photographer who only shows commissioned work is only showing what somebody else asked for.
Long exposures, reflections, abstraction to the point where the subject stops being identifiable and becomes shape and colour. Some of it fails completely.
How these get made
I work whatever holds my attention until it either becomes a picture or it doesn't. Usually it doesn't. A long exposure means standing in one place while the frame fills in, checking, adjusting, standing there again. Reflections mean moving a few inches at a time until two things line up that were never meant to.
Abstraction is the same patience pointed at the subject: taking away detail until what's left has to hold the frame on its own. None of that is complicated. It just asks you to stay put longer than feels reasonable.
What people get wrong looking at these
The first question is almost always what it is. People want a label, and the moment they land on one they stop looking — which is the opposite of what these frames are doing. Abstraction isn't a puzzle with an answer hidden inside it.
Taking the subject out takes away the reason to move on. What's left is whatever was interesting in the first place: the way a highlight bends, how much darkness a picture can carry before it stops being a picture. Try not naming anything and see how long you stay.
Explore my other photography categories or get in touch if you’re planning a project.